Blessed is He who, if He willed, could have made for you [something] better than that - gardens beneath which rivers flow - and could make for you palaces. 10 Nay they deny the hour (of the judgment to come): but We have prepared a blazing fire for such as deny the hour: 11 When it beholdeth them from afar, they shall hear it raging and roaring. 12 And when they are cast, bound together into a constricted place therein, they will plead for destruction there and then! 13 Call not today for a single death but call for death manifold. 14 Say: Is that (doom) better or the Garden of Immortality which is promised unto those who ward off (evil)? It will be their reward and journey's end. 15 Therein they will eternally have whatever they want. This is a binding promise from your Lord." 16 BUT [as for people who are oblivious of thy Sustainer's oneness] one Day He will gather them together with all that they [now] worship instead of God, and will ask [those to whom divinity was falsely ascribed]: "Was it you who led these My creatures astray, or did they by themselves stray from the right path?" 17 They shall say: Glory be to Thee; it was not beseeming for us that we should take any guardians besides Thee, but Thou didst make them and their fathers to enjoy until they forsook the reminder, and they were a people in perdition, 18 [Thereupon God will say:] "And now, they [whom you regarded as divine] have given the lie to all your [past] assertions, and you can neither ward off [your punishment] nor obtain any succour! For, whoever of you has committed [such] evil, him shall We cause to taste great suffering!" 19 All the Messengers whom We sent before, certainly, ate food and walked through the streets. We have made some of you (people) a trial for the others. Would you then exercise patience? Your Lord is All-aware. 20